Results Are In on British Gun Laws

Dr. Michael S. Brown

January 20, 2000

Many advocates of gun control point to
Great Britain as an example of a gun free paradise where violence and
crime are rare. Well, there may be trouble in paradise. Our friends
across the Atlantic did tighten their already strict gun laws, with the
Firearms Act of 1997, making self-defense
with a firearm completely impossible for ordinary people.

Obedient
British subjects generally maintained a stiff upper lip as they
surrendered their guns and their rights. How much did crime drop as a
result of this sacrifice? It did not drop at all. In fact, according to
the local newspapers, England is being swept by a wave of crime,
including plenty of gun crimes.

The
London Times published a story on January 16th that sums up
the situation rather well. The headline reads, "Killings
Rise As 3 Million Illegal Guns Flood Britain". Armed
crime rose 10% in 1998 and the numbers for 1999 may be even more
dramatic.

The British experiment with gun
prohibition has resulted in the same outcome as other forms of
prohibition. Since guns are banned, every criminal wants one and it is
very profitable to smuggle them in.

According to
a police spokesman, weapons from Eastern Europe, some still new in
their boxes, are turning up during investigations. Criminals now have
unprecedented access to high quality guns at affordable prices.

The Manchester Guardian, on January 14th,
laments the fact that their city is being called "Gunchester". Police
sources were quoted as saying that guns had become "almost a fashion
accessory" among young criminals on the street. Some gangs are armed
with fully automatic weapons and the generally unarmed British police
say that they risk confronting teenagers on mountain bikes brandishing
machine guns.

The Sunday Express
sent a team of reporters out to investigate the problem and reported in
their story of June 20, 1999: "In recent months there have been a
frightening number of shootings in Britain's major cities, despite new
laws banning gun ownership after the Dunblane tragedy. Our
investigation established that guns are available through means open to
any criminally minded individual."

The
government is expected to respond by further tightening the laws on
weapons of all sorts. Additional regulations controlling knives and
airguns are said to be in the works, although this might be likened to
beating a dead horse. The very act of armed self-defense is already
punishable by law. That right has been handed over to the government in
return for a promise of protection.

Perhaps motor
vehicles need to be more heavily regulated as well. According to a
commercial security report, New Wave in Retail Crime,
British bandits are using vehicles to smash storefronts in a type of
crime called "ramraiding", which would be impractical if shopkeepers
had the option of arming themselves. The report states that, "Many
retailers have actually gone out of business because of the repeated
attacks on their premises."

This recent rise in
crime is part of an upward trend that correlates well with the gradual
tightening of gun control over the last several decades. The
relationship between increasing gun control and rising crime is well
documented in a scholarly 1999 report by Olsen and Kopel, All
the Way Down the Slippery Slope - Gun Prohibition in England.

The traditional view of England as a low crime
society has also been seriously damaged by the 1998 study, Crime
and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales,
which is available from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. This
report concludes that English crime rates in the period from 1981 to
1996 were actually higher than in the United States due to differences
in the way crimes are reported.

The
negative result from gun control laws should not surprise us. American
cities have had similar counterproductive results whenever gun control
has been implemented locally. Recent reports from Australia tell
exactly the same story.

It is no
coincidence that crime typically goes up after a government enacts new
gun restrictions. Several American researchers and criminologists have
explored this effect. Whenever people give up their
right to self-defense in return for a promise of government protection,
the results have been negative. No amount of social
engineering will change this basic consequence of human nature.

Unfortunately, the downward
progression of gun control goes only one way. British subjects will
never regain the right to armed self-defense.

Proponents of gun control in America have a lot of explaining
to do. Unfortunately, with the aid of their media allies, this new
information will probably be ignored completely or brushed off with a
few carefully chosen sound bites.

Dr.
Michael S. Brown is an optometrist in Vancouver, WA who moderates a
large email list for discussion of gun issues in Washington State.